In spite of one indulgent day of feeling rather sorry for myself (yes, I managed to keep it to just one day!), it’s been a terrific week of working through another chapter in The Beck Diet Solution and also (re)starting my diet.
This week I give myself credit for:
- Sitting down to eat, every single time.
- Eating slowly, paying attention to my level of fullness.
- Leaving food on my plate when I’d had enough.
- Tracking my food every day.
- Exercising for 12 minutes every day.
- Going for a spontaneous walk.
- Losing 4.8 pounds at my first weigh-in, bringing my total amount of weight lost to 35 pounds!
If you’d like to catch up on my experiences to date with The Beck Diet Solution, my previous posts are here:
- Introduction – my experience
- Week 1 (Chapter 5 – Get Ready: Lay the Groundwork) – my experience
- Week 2 (Chapter 6 – Get Set: Prepare to Diet) – my experience
Week 3 (Chapter 7 – Go: Start Your Diet)
After having spent two weeks learning and practicing new diet skills, this chapter’s readings and tasks guide you through the first week of officially starting your diet, teaching you additional strategies along the way.
Monitoring your eating was the important first task, which I fulfilled by daily tracking my food intake on MyFitnessPal.
I thought I’d share a handful of the Response Cards I made and used throughout the week, to give you an idea of a few of the things I’ve been learning throughout this chapter.
This concept was mentioned early in the book – perhaps even as far back as the introduction – and it really stuck with me. As with any other exercise, the more you do it the easier it becomes to perform… so you need to make sure that you’re focusing your energies on the right exercise and that you’re strengthening the right habit.
This is a big one for me – HUGE – because when someone tries to tell me that I have NO CHOICE about something, my immediate response is rebellion. This has in some cases been good, but when it comes to food and eating it’s been my downfall. What The Beck Diet Solution has helped me to realize is that the reason I have no choice when it comes to overeating is because I have already MADE my choice, of my own free will – the choice to change my thinking, the choice to diet, and as a result the choice to lose weight. Overeating does not support MY choice, so when it comes to overeating, I give myself NO CHOICE.
I found learning to stop overeating – to leave food on my plate when I’d had enough – MUCH easier after having been practicing eating slowly and paying attention to my level of fullness. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I’d found it enlightening to realize that eating slowly allowed me to actually feel myself getting full before it was too late; this new strategy took that enlightenment a step further by teaching me to listen to that feeling of fullness and stop eating even if there was still some food left on my plate. (If you have trouble with the notion of throwing food away because it’s wasteful, The Beck Diet Solution reminds you that it’ll be wasted in the trash or wasted in your body – it’s your choice!)
This was another biggie for me – particularly the phrase right this minute. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve “blown it” and told myself I’d “start again tomorrow” (and I am SURE there are others who can relate to this!). Now, if I eat something that wasn’t in my plan, I’ll remind myself that it’s not the end of the world, and I will get back on track right this minute.
As I said earlier, it’s been a terrific week… and I’m looking forward to more of the same in Week Four.
Onward!
